Chapter 12
Kallie
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Kallie scanned groceries with the kind of disinterested efficiency that came from doing the same motion thousands of times. Beep. Slide. Bag. Give a smile that didn't reach her eyes. Repeat.
The store buzzed with fluorescent lights and the low hum of refrigerators. Customers shuffled through the aisles, comparing prices, arguing with their kids, living lives that seemed normal from the outside.
Kallie didn't feel normal.
She hadn't since the day Finn pushed her through the veil.
It took some online research to find the words to describe what had happened to her, and the only parallels she found were on supernatural websites and in fictional entertainment.
Finn was a real man. Everstill, while small, was a working town.
There was nothing online that matched what she'd experienced over the years.
Four years later, she still woke some mornings with the phantom feeling of Finn's hands on her shoulders, the wind roaring around them, her voice breaking as she screamed his name.
She swallowed hard and forced her attention back to the register.
"Hey, sweetheart." The male customer leaned over the counter. "You got a smile for me?"
She didn't look at him. "Your total is eighteen dollars and forty-two cents."
He leaned in, breath thick with alcohol. "Come on. A pretty girl like you shouldn't look so serious."
Her jaw tightened. Men always said things like that.
Men at the store. Men on the street. Men in restaurants when her coworkers dragged her out after shifts.
Men who reminded her too much of the ones who used to hang around her mother when she was a young child.
They were always loud, careless, and hungry for something they hadn't earned.
She handed him his change without meeting his eyes or touching his hand.
He lingered a second too long before walking away. She exhaled slowly, shoulders tight.
Her manager called her name from across the store. "Go ahead and pull your till."
She nodded, grateful that her shift was over. Exchanging places with Pauline, she dropped off her drawer, clocked out, and grabbed her purse and coat.
Outside, the October air was cool. She hurried through the parking lot, past the bus stop, and along the row of small shops until she reached the edge of town, where the roads branched like veins.
She stood there, staring at the asphalt.
Every day, she explored a different road.
Every day, she hoped to find the seam between this world and Finn.
The first time she'd slipped into Everstill, she'd been ten. The second time, she'd been sixteen. Both times, she'd been in different places. Different towns. Different roads.
Which meant the rift wasn't fixed to one place.
She either found the veil leading to Everstill or it had found her. She wasn't sure how it worked.
She pulled out her phone and opened the rideshare app. She'd already spent too much money on Uber rides to nowhere, but she didn't care. She'd taken rides to the outskirts of neighboring towns, to rural roads, to dead ends, to places that felt wrong in the right way and right in the wrong way.
She'd walked miles.
She'd memorized every curve, every tree line, every shift in the wind, and nothing had happened. She remained in her life, no matter how dull and repetitive it had become after she aged out of the state's care.
She closed the app and started walking.
Her apartment was small. A temporary place like all the foster homes she'd lived in over the years.
It only had one bedroom. The paint was peeling, and the window stuck when it rained.
But she paid her rent every month with the wages she made at the grocery store.
She never complained because she'd experienced worse.
She'd lived in places where she wasn't wanted. At least living by herself, the loneliness was understandable.
She walked for an hour, then two more, letting her tired feet choose the direction. The sun dipped lower, painting the sky in muted golds and pinks. The wind shifted, brushing her hair across her face.
Her heart jumped.
She stopped.
Waited.
Listened.
But the air stayed still. She let out a shaky breath and kept walking.
She didn't know why she was doing this. Why couldn't she let Finn go? Why did she still feel the pull of a man she'd only known in stolen moments?
Some nights, she swore she could hear his voice in her dreams. Some mornings, she woke with her hand curled around her wrist, panicked that she'd lost the bracelet she made from his hair.
Then the relief would hit her hard, knowing she no longer wore it because the strands were breaking and she was afraid she'd lose it.
The bracelet was now stored in a small box for safekeeping.
Time was a thief, and she felt it closing in on her.
One day, the strand of Finn's hair would dry out and crumble between her fingers and disappear.
So, she guarded the bracelet like something fragile and irreplaceable.
She shielded it from air, sunlight, and moisture, doing everything she could to keep it just a little longer.
She still had the jacket he'd wrapped around her before she left his house, but fabric couldn't hold a heartbeat. It couldn't hold him.
The hair was different.
It was the closest she could get to touching him again, and the thought of losing even that small piece of him hurt more than she ever expected.
She never told anyone about Finn or her time spent in Everstill. Why would they believe her? Every time she came back, it was as if time hadn't passed. No one had missed her during her time spent with Finn because to them, she wasn't gone.
It was the craziest thing. Half the time, she wondered if she was losing her mind.
She reached a crossroads and stopped again, staring down each road like one of them might open if she looked hard enough.
"Please," she whispered. "Just once. Let me go."
The wind remained calm. The world stayed stubbornly real. She looked up. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She looked at the text. It was her manager, reminding her that she had the early shift tomorrow.
She walked, taking the closest road and trudging on. She wasn't the same girl who'd begged Finn to let her stay. She wasn't broken and lost.
But she wasn't whole either.
Everstill had taken something from her. Finn had taken something from her.
She sighed and looked at the asphalt. No, she'd given herself to them.
All she knew was that she'd keep walking roads until her feet blistered, if that's what it took to get back to Finn.
Somewhere out there, a door existed that only she could go through. And she wasn't done trying to find a way to open it.